The Alchemist

by Paulo Coelho

“Amongst us, the only ones who travel are the shepherds.” “Well, then I’ll be a shepherd!”

“What’s the world’s greatest lie?” the boy asked, completely surprised. “It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.”

The boy didn’t know what a person’s “Personal Legend” was. “It’s what you have always wanted to accomplish. Everyone, when they are young, knows what their Personal Legend is.

there is one great truth on this planet: whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it’s because that desire originated in the soul of the universe.

“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

when each day is the same as the next, it’s because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises.

He remembered something his grandfather had once told him: that butterflies were a good omen. Like crickets, and like grasshoppers; like lizards and four-leaf clovers.

“Don’t forget that everything you deal with is only one thing and nothing else.

But you are forcing me to look at wealth and at horizons I have never known. Now that I have seen them, and now that I see how immense my possibilities are, I’m going to feel worse than I did before you arrived. Because I know the things I should be able to accomplish, and I don’t want to do so.”

If he pushed forward impulsively, he would fail to see the signs and omens left by God along his path.

There is only that moment, and the incredible certainty that everything under the sun has been written by one hand only. It is the hand that evokes love, and creates a twin soul for every person in the world. Without such love, one’s dreams would have no meaning.

The dunes are changed by the wind, but the desert never changes. That’s the way it will be with our love for each other.

When you are in love, things make even more sense, he thought.

“One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.”